Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

APPENDIXES
APPENDIX 1: GLOSSARY OF ITALIAN TERMINOLOGY USED
Alpini The Alpini are the mountain troops of the Italian army.
Avvocato di fiducia An avvocato di fiducia is a lawyer who a person has individually chosen
to represent them for a case.
Avvocato di ufficio An avvocato d’ufficio is a lawyer who is appointed by the judge or the
prosecution in cases where legal assistance is required by law but a person did not nominate
their own lawyer.
Camera di Consiglio Camera di consiglio is a special proceeding characterised by the fact that
the dispute is resolved in a faster and private way without a public audience with limited
istruttoria.
Carabinieri The Carabinieri is one of the five Italian police branches. It is under the
authority of the Ministry of Defence. Similarly to Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri’s main
functions are: maintaining order, ensuring public security and preventing crimes. The
Carabinieri is also part of the Italian army, so it is a military police branch.
Commissione territoriale The Commissione territoriale per il riconoscimento della
protezione internazionale is an administrative body under the authority of the Ministry of the
Interior. Its function is to examine and decide on the applications for the recognition of the
refugee status or the subsidiary protection status. There are ten Commissioni Territoriali in Italy.
Each of them is competent over a territory that comprises a number of provinces.
Contradditorio In the context of immigration detention, contraddittorio essentially means
that the validation hearing should not take place without hearing the foreigner’s submissions
because the purpose of the validation hearing is to hear the parties, in a way that enables the
Giudice di Pace to evaluate the legitimacy of the expulsion decree.
Corte di Cassazione The Corte di Cassazione is the Italian Supreme Court located in Rome. It
is a giudice di legittimità, which means that it cannot undertake merits review and it can only
hear judicial review questions about the interpretation of law and procedural correctness.
Moreover, it solves conflicts about jurisdiction.
Giudice di Pace A Giudice di Pace is a non-specialist small-claims judge who is in charge of
resolving minor cases or disputes under civil, administrative or criminal law. In Italian, a Giudice
di Pace is commonly called an “honorary judge” (giudice onorario) who is appointed by the
Minister of Justice. Giudici di Pace are paid proportionally based on the number of matters that
they decide, rather than the amount of time that they spend hearing and deliberating over
matters. Selection is based on qualifications and generally the selected Giudici di Pace are law
graduates who have obtained the qualification to practice law or who have exercised judicial
functions. Unlike in some jurisdictions, in Italy it is not necessary to have years of experience as
a lawyer or barrister before undertaking the Giudice di Pace role. The only further requirement
is that a Giudice di Pace must be between thirty and sixty-five years of age. In criminal matters
the Giudice di Pace does not have the power to imprison a person.
Giudice togato A giudice togato is a judge who exercises a judicial function indefinitely and
who is appointed via an open and competitive application process.
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